Young Men's Institute Building

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the area surrounding the Young Men's Institute (YMI) was the center of the business district for Asheville's African Americans. George Vanderbilt built the YMI in 1893 to serve as the equivalent of ...

Unearthing Florida: Santa Maria de Galve

For the people who lived at Pensacola’s first permanent Spanish colonial settlement, isolated on the frontier, religion provided them with the means to cope with harsh conditions.

Like Santa Maria de Galve, each settlement had churches and cemeteries, and priests, who ...

Unearthing Florida: Nuestra de Soledad

Human burials under the floor of a catholic church in St. Augustine highlight the dramatic cultural shifts that occurred there centuries ago.

I’m Dr. Judy Bense, and this is Unearthing Florida…

Originally built by the Spanish sometime shortly after 1572, the chapel ...

Unearthing Florida: Nombre de Dios

In 2011 archaeologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History uncovered an extraordinary find- the possible ruins of the oldest stone church in the state.

Originally built in 1677, the church at the Spanish mission of Nombre de Dios in St. ...

Unearthing Florida: Bureau of Archaeological Research

Have you ever wondered what happens to all the artifacts that archaeologists unearth in Florida?

The State of Florida’s Bureau of Archaeological Research, or BAR, in Tallahassee has a wonderful conservation lab and collections facility. This is where the artifacts found ...

Asheville Hotel Building

Asheville Elks Lodge #608 (now known as the Asheville Hotel Building) opened their new home on June 14, 1915, (Flag Day) with great fanfare and attention. Located at the corner of Haywood and Walnut streets and designed by Smith and ...

Unearthing Florida: Newnan's Lake Canoes

When lakes dry up, amazing things are sometimes brought to light; such was the case at Newnan’s Lake, where ancient canoes were exposed.

2000 was a very dry year, and as Florida’s lakes and sinkholes shrank, sunken water craft were revealed. ...

Downtown Asheville Historic District

Established in 1797 as the trading center and seat of the newly created Buncombe County, Asheville (then called Morristown) grew steadily through the 19th century as the economic and government center of western North Carolina. Following the arrival of the ...

Unearthing Florida: S.S. Tarpon

The SS Tarpon was one of the unfortunate steamships in Florida’s maritime history.

For over three decades SS Tarpon, built in the late Nineteenth Century, never missed its weekly trips hauling cargo and passengers along the gulf coast, but on August ...

Unearthing Florida:U.S.S. Massachusetts

The USS Massachusetts rests silently beneath 26 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico south of Pensacola- but unlike many shipwrecks she was put there on purpose.

At one time Massachusetts was a marvel of modern engineering. First launched in ...